The first heat of steel was tapped on Thanksgiving Day in 1899 and the first load of Ensley steel was shipped to a Connecticut buyer on January 1, 1900. Reports of inexpensive steel being made in the South concerned established operators such as Andrew Carnegie. When former Minnesota Iron president Don Bacon came to Ensley in 1901 to observe the works, he characterized the operation, from the mines to finished product, as a "medley of make shifts". By 1906, even with the recent addition of the plant's sixth and largest furnace, he estimated that $25 million would be needed to overhaul the plant to meet modern standards of efficient manufacture.

The addition of the Bessemer converter to the plant in 1904 helped increase the quality and quantity of Ensley's steel output, the first to be produced by the "duplex process". 1904's total production was 155,000 tons. Two years later the plant produced 402,000 tons. By 1907 Bacon had been succeeded by John Topping who was tapped to oversee the necessary capital improvements. The blast furnaces were entirely rebuilt and new open hearths constructed. A second more efficient rail mill was added.

U. S. Steel

In November 1907, amid swirlings of a Wall Street financial panic, executives of U. S. Steel felt out the position of the White House on whether their acquisition of TCI would merit criticism as an attempt to monopolize steel production. With a crisis at stake without the larger company's investment, President Theodore Roosevelt assured them that he "felt it no public duty" to object to the suggestion. The deal was agreed upon within days. The primary value to the company was the mineral resources of the Birmingham District which were under TCI's control. One executive estimated that the company had purchased $90-100 million worth of coal reserves and infrastructure for their $30 million investment.

U. S. Steel sent George Crawford to oversee TCI's operations and over $30 million in improvements made over the next six years. Crawford reported drastic improvements in quality after only 18 months, reducing the scrap yield of newly-made rail from 40% to 10% while cutting costs from $29 to $20 per ton. In 1912 the Ensley works produced 840,000 tons of steel, by far leading all Southern competitors. It was in that year that the American Steel and Wire Company built the first industrial plant at TCI's newly-planned city of Fairfield (originally called "Corey").

Scene of the Ensley Works with worker's housing in the foreground. Arthur Rothstein for the Farm Security Administration, 1937

Most of the new Fairfield operations were involved in finishing steel ingots made at Ensley. During World War I wartime demand required the Ensley plant to continue increasing capacity. By 1920 Ensley's furnaces could output 1.25 million tons. By 1945, expanded again during World War II, Ensley was producing 1.57 million tons and, with the post-war demand for building material, had increased capacity to 1.77 million tons by 1959. Nevertheless, the more modern integrated steel making processes at Fairfield began to supplant the open-hearth method used in Ensley. U. S. Steel closed the open hearths in 1975 and closed the last major operating section of the Ensley Works, the melt shop, in 1976. The works were shuttered in 1979 and all activity on the site ceased in 1984.

Reevelopment proposals

A hot melt mixer at the site of the Ensley Works in 1995

U.S. Steel's USS Real Estate division still owns the 600-acre site of the former works, which has been left all but abandoned. The site is dominated by the still-standing smokestacks. A few brick structures and a massive hot metal mixer remain as landmarks. Kudzu grows over the foundations of the former open hearth, blooming and rail mills and collection ponds and pits which remain a danger to trespassers.

In 1988 USX, the City of Birmingham and Auburn University partnered on a $100,000 study of the best uses for the 700-acre property. The recommendation was to develop an industrial park which could anchor a larger redevelopment project for western Birmingham over the course of 15 to 20 years. The partners recommended saving at least some of the eight smokestacks as reminders of the site's history and as a visual landmark to identify the development. They would be preserved as elements of a picnic ground in the center of the industrial development and enhanced with landscaping and interpretive signage. A four-lane parkway through the center of the site would eventually connect to the Birmingham Airport and USX's Fairfield Works and function as a major east-west route across the northern section of Birmingham, reducing congestion on I-59/20. That plan never moved forward.

Various proposals have been made to take advantage of the site's size and abundant rail access for new industrial uses. In 1993, the city proposed the 600-acre site as an automotive supplier park to serve the Mercedes-Benz US International plant in Tuscaloosa County. Part of the plan would have encompassed an intermodal rail hub. New "greenfield" parks were developed instead in Pinson Valley and North Birmingham.

In 2011 Bell reported that USS Real Estate was in the process of conducting environmental assessments and looking to forge an agreement with the city to effect a clean-up. Projected uses include primarily light industrial and distribution sites. The idea of extending a canal from Birmingport is still under consideration, especially if a portion of the property can be used for residential development.

References

Dodd, James Harvey (1928) A History of the Production in the Iron and Steel Industry in the Southern Appalachian States, 1901-1926. Nashville, Tennessee: Cullom & Ghertner Co.